John Philcox, beginning his seventh year as a volunteer for the MCI Heritage golf tourney on Monday, described the difference between The Masters tournament last week and the 37-year-old Heritage on Hilton Head.

"The Masters is a golfing fans' tournament," said Philcox, who is captain of the marshals on the 16th hole. "Heritage is the partygoers tournament."

The party mood for the event was already in swing beside the 18th hole at Harbour Town Golf Links on Monday as the week of events for this year's Heritage began with the popping of champagne bottles, the hum of bagpipes and the traditional blast from a cannon as last year's champion, Stewart Cink, drove a shot into Calibogue Sound. Golf fans traded stories of past tournament experiences, sipped beer and laughed about their Bloody Mary breakfasts while discussing where to find the best viewing spots during the tournament.

The weather was clear -- a change from last year when the threat of rain canceled the opening ceremonies -- and the temperatures in the upper 70s had some of the event's special guests sweating beneath their tartan jackets.

Those guests included Gov. Mark Sanford, who donned the traditional Heritage garb and told the crowd that the event serves as a reminder of how important golf is to this state, both economically and socially.

The other new special guests at the ceremony this year couldn't fit into a tartan jacket, but still grabbed the crowd's attention: Fighter jets from a Beaufort-based Marine Corps squadron flew low over the links as Cink's ball was sinking to the bottom of the sound.

Speakers at the ceremony took time to honor Sea Pines developer Charles Fraser, who helped bring a PGA event to the island, originally as a marketing tool for the community. Others praised the work of the Heritage Classic Foundation, the nonprofit group that stages the tournament and has distributed more than $11 million in charitable donations since it took on the job in 1987.

"It's an enterprise that was born out of a crisis 18 years ago," said Norm Harberger, the honorary chairman of the event. The foundation was first formed to keep the tournament on the island when its future looked to be in doubt, but has now grown to be one of the premier charitable groups in the region.

"That's pretty impressive," he said.

Monday's events also honored the 13 Beaufort County high school students who received scholarships this year from the foundation. After the ceremony, the students stood under the midday sun and posed for pictures with Sanford, Cink and other officials at the event.

Harberger is not a golfer himself -- an issue that may raise an eyebrow among the golfing elite, foundation member Joe Fraser joked with the crowd. But Harberger, who has a background in math and physics, could put his skills to use and "probably would've been another Tiger Woods," Fraser said. Harberger, the former chairman of Sea Pines Associates, said he knows better.

"With the kind of rational mind that goes with being a mathematician," he said, "the same rational mind keeps one from undertaking an activity for which one is doomed to consistently get worse."

Mayor Tom Peeples, also donning the plaid jacket, thanked the more than 1,000 volunteers involved in the event for helping to keep it running. He also talked about the impact the Heritage has on the town. Construction deadlines for many projects, such as the renovations of Sea Pines Circle, always are set to be finished by the time the tournament starts.

"If we didn't have a Heritage tournament," Peeples said, "I don't know if we'd get anything done."